How Rally Funding Helped Launch a Scientist’s Bold Ideas to Fight Brain Cancer

Christina von Roemeling, Ph.D., is on a mission to find better ways to treat brain tumors. When she was just starting her scientific career, Rally Foundation for Childhood Cancer Research gave her an important boost, a Postdoctoral and Clinical Research Fellow Grant in 2020. 

That support came during a tough time. Many research funders paused their work during the COVID-19 pandemic, but Rally kept going. This allowed Dr. von Roemeling to continue her work without delay. 

“The Rally Foundation award was truly instrumental in shaping the trajectory of my scientific career,” she said. 

Fighting Brain Cancer in New Ways 

With her Rally funding, Dr. von Roemeling joined a team at the University of Florida developing a therapeutic mRNA nanoparticle vaccine, an entirely new way to treat brain tumors in children. 

When many people hear “mRNA,” they think of COVID-19 vaccines. But mRNA is just a tool, and it can be used in many different ways. In this case, Dr. von Roemeling’s team isn’t trying to prevent disease, they’re using therapeutic mRNA to help the immune system recognize and fight cancer cells inside the brain. 

Here’s how it works: 
– mRNA (messenger RNA) carries genetic instructions that teach the body’s immune system what cancer looks like. 
– These instructions are packaged in tiny nanoparticles that help the mRNA travel safely through the body, especially to the brain, where the cancer is. 

This groundbreaking research was published in Cell, one of the world’s top scientific journals, and it holds promise for future treatments for medulloblastoma and other deadly brain tumors in kids. 

She also worked on: 
– Gene therapy using a harmless virus called AAV to deliver helpful genes directly into brain tumors, later published in Nature Communications. 
– Improving CAR T cell therapy, a treatment that trains a child’s immune cells to fight cancer. 
– Testing a small molecule drug for a rare brain cancer called CNS lymphoma, which led to a new clinical trial. 

Becoming a Leader 

Rally’s early investment helped Dr. von Roemeling earn a faculty position. She is now a Tenure-Track Assistant Professor leading her own lab, with seven team members, over $2.5 million in funding, and five research projects, three of which focus on childhood brain cancer. 

“Rally’s commitment to supporting early-career investigators has a lasting impact,” she said. “I am sincerely grateful for your investment in young scientists like myself.” 

This is why early-stage research funding matters.

This is the power of philanthropic seed investing.

This is Rally.